Immediate and short-term impact of a brief motivational smoking intervention using a biomedical risk assessment: the Get PHIT trial.

INTRODUCTION: Providing smokers with biologically based evidence of smoking-related disease risk or physical impairment may be an effective way to motivate cessation. METHODS: Smokers were recruited for a free health risk assessment and randomized to receive personally tailored feedback based on their lung functioning, carbon monoxide (CO) exposure, and smoking-related health conditions or generic information about the risks of smoking and personalized counseling based on their diet, body mass index, and physical activity. All (n = 536) were advised to quit smoking and offered access to a free telephone cessation program. Participants were surveyed immediately after intervention and 1 month later to assess the impact on various indices of motivation to quit. RESULTS: Immediately posttreatment, experimental participants rated themselves as more likely to try to quit (p = .02) and reported a greater mean increase in their motivation to quit than controls (p = .04). At 1-month follow-up, however, we found no significant group differences on any motivational indices. In post-hoc analyses comparing smokers in the experimental group with and without lung impairment, persons with impaired lung functioning had a greater change from baseline in posttreatment motivation to quit (adjusted p = .05) and perceived risk of developing a smoking-related disease (p = .03) compared with persons with no lung impairment, but we found no significant treatment effect on any motivational indices at 1 month. DISCUSSION: The results suggest that the intervention had a small, temporary effect, but we found no clear evidence that the intervention increased motivation to quit smoking during the first month postintervention.

Quality of life valuations of mammography screening.

OBJECTIVE: To obtain quality-of-life (QOL) valuations associated with mammography screening and breast cancer treatment that are suitable for use in cost-effectiveness analyses. METHODS: Subjects comprised 131 women (age range 50-79 years) randomly sampled from a breast cancer screening program. In an in-person or telephone interview, women rated the QOL impact of 14 clinical scenarios (ranging from mammography to end-of-life care for breast cancer) using a visual analogue scale anchored by death (0) and perfect health/quality of life (100). RESULTS: Women rated the scenarios describing true negative results, false positive results, and routine screening mammography at 80 or above on a scale of 0-100, suggesting that they perceive these states as being close to perfect health. They rated adjuvant chemotherapy (39.7; range 10-90), palliation/end-of-life care (35.8; range 0-100), and recurrence at 1 year (33.0; range 0-95) the lowest, suggesting that these health states are perceived as compromised. Women rated receiving news of a breast cancer diagnosis (true positive) (45.7; range 5-100) and receiving delayed news of a breast cancer diagnosis (false negative) (48.5; range 5-100) as being comparable to undergoing mastectomy (48.3; range 10-100) and radiation therapy (46.2; range 5-100) for breast cancer. CONCLUSIONS: These data can be used to update cost analyses of mammography screening that wish to take into account the QOL impact of screening.